With the Digital Service Act (DSA) the European Commission aims to foster innovation and competition, to rebalance responsibilities of users, platforms and public authorities and to better protect consumers and their fundamental rights online.

The main benefits of the Proposal are that tracking of traders is introduced and that massive enforcement failings with respect to illegal online advertising are reduced to some extent. However, the AK EUROPA position paper shows a need for improvement in the DSA: There is a complete lack of accompanying positive liability principles applicable to negligent platforms and no distinction is made between online marketplaces and other platforms. There are major deficits with regard to non-European platforms that provide their services in the EU and the DSA provides only a few provisions for reporting and dispute settlement systems. The close connections of digital services with platform workers are completely ignored.